Build Your Brand
All successful large businesses understand. How important it is to have a world-class brand and to make maximum use of its potential. Of course, there is much more to branding. Then simply coming up with a catchy tagline and choosing corporate typefaces and colors. The best definition of branding is the experience that customers have while engaging with your business. Therefore, it extends to things like how you communicate by email. How you answer your phones and the way that you dress. You might have a VoIP phone system for small businesses, however, that doesn’t mean your ambitions need to be limited. You can rise above your class by achieving a brilliant brand. Here are some great tips.
Design And Build A Better Website for business
Most large companies have quality websites. Of course, it helps to have the budget to be able to hire a top agency. When prospective customers are interested in learning more about you, they will most likely look online. This is where you can potentially lose many prospective customers if your website has a basic DIY appearance and is full of poorly written copy, bad imagery, poorly chosen typefaces, and garish colors. If you want your business to appear large, this could be the ideal time to build a brand-new website or improve your existing one.
Your business might be small, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a big impression with your website- and frequently for only a fraction of the money that the ‘big boys’ spend. Be sure to set up a professional-sounding email address while you are at it. Individuals who work for large businesses don’t tend to use free web-based email addresses (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, or Gmail) for their business email.
3) When It Comes to Packaging- Don’t Skimp
Packaging is fairly inexpensive; however, many web-based companies tend to overlook it. Visualize attempting to use your packaging to sell your products to consumers (where the customer only sees it for a couple of seconds before they either stop or look some more or move on). When your customer receives your product, they should feel reassured and like they would have been happy to purchase it if they had first seen it in a store in person. Before they even get to the product, make them love it. It’s also a great place to show your other products to them, as well as things like your Facebook address and Twitter handle. Your future sales can be marketed through your packaging. Here is a great piece on the power of packaging.
4) Lead with a Strong Voice for Business
One of the most valuable and successful marketing efforts that a small business can make is handling their incoming phone calls effectively. When customers call you, make sure you provide them with a high-quality and positive experience through capitalizing on the many innovative voice service features that are now available. See some of the call answering features here. For example, when someone calls your business telephone number, and sequential and simultaneous ringing features are utilized, the call can be forwarded to several alternative phone numbers, which helps customers get help faster. Personal attendant features provide the VoIP call routing and custom greeting options. There is also enhanced voicemail that is available that converts messages automatically into digital audio files, which are then delivered instantly to your email. Advanced email solutions make it possible for customers to get a large response when calling your small business.
5) Get an Outside Office as Soon as Possible for Business
Unless your business is one you will be running from home permanently, get some type of office as soon as you are able to afford it and justify it. I started my business from home like so many people do. However, my first goal was to move into a “real” place as soon as I could. That way I could have a place for meetings other than a coffee shop, and also just driving to work every day and having my name on the door really gave me the feeling of having a real business. It motivated me (to have the money to pay the rent, for one thing). Although my first stockroom and office were on the small side, it was real. I was able to have people come and they would know my business was legitimate.